In Eden, the cafe at the end of the world

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78SkTuk8Zd4

Last night I dreamed I was dancing with old friends, colleagues and students. One used to head the bereavement serice at Sobell, while Mary was my co-director, and is now long dead. Visitors from beyond the grave often come to people who are dying, as this video shows.

I am not sure how long I have left to carry on my work, but am currently well and enjoying what i am doing very much.

Peter Fenwick supervised Penny Sartori on her PhD study of people in the Cardiff cardiology centre who have had Near Death Experiences. I met her in oxford a while back. Lovely woman.

There is a great deal of research both from brain scientists and phenomenological researchers in this area now. I was very blessed to meet two people with insights in the area today at my departure lounge /death cafe meeting.


I was speaking to someone in the street yesterday about my death cafe (which happened today) and he complained that all the people he met at the one he attended a while ago were talking about their near death experiences.

Today, in the actual cafe meeting no one came specifically for the meeting.

However, a couple sat down close by me for coffee, seemingly oblivious of the event.

I engaged them in conversation. They were both doctors, one a distinguished brain surgeon. She had had a near death experience. Jung would call this synchronicity.

We had a fascinating conversation. He left me his card. Tonight I wrote to him so perhaps there will be more to follow.

I will do some more publicity and maybe I won't need synchronicity to bring people into the cafe on halloween next Thursday morning between nine and eleven. Oh, the staff are friendly and the food is vegan.

entrance to the cafe with departure lounge sandals

The departure lounge inside Eden.

cosey corner with head rests for those preparing to depart

time for reflection and maybe planning

Dignity in Dying

I am reading a very touching novel called "Chocolat" at the moment. If you did not read the book you may have come across the film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32x33l2sLe8  with Juliette Binoche and Jonny Depp.

I can't recall if the old man with his dying dog comes into the film or not. It makes a very sad tale in the book. I have seen so many people stricken by the suffering of their dogs. Dogs live such short lives in comparison with humans. We love them more than most humans and they are firmer friends and loving conscious beings.

As a poet, Kipling,  said

Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog, to tare.

We are encouraged to put down our dogs when they have cancer. This old man leaves it very late, till his dog cries out in pain all night. He needs his friend. He is utterly bereft when he finally gives in and goes to the vet.

Most people want to die at home, but the great majority do not die at home. They die in hospital or in a "home." We do not have to think quite so much about people dying that way. There are professional carers for that. They are often overworked and underpaid, and may not care that much, not as much as the nearest and dearest are supposed to care.

How do you want to die?

Have you made a living will?

or a will?

You may not even have the option to go to the vet/doctor, even when you have suffered more than enough.

We know that people will receive very good care in a hospice like Sobell House in Oxford.

Kubler Ross described how the medicines she formulated helped dying patients avoid suffering. However, some people do not respond well to such drugs. Their pain remains.

Please see my events at  https://www.edencafe.kiwi/ on 24 and 31st October after breakfast.

Maybe it is time to talk about death, and even https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/why-we-need-change/the-facts/

https://acmedsci.ac.uk/policy/policy-projects/the-departure-lounge   gives you much more information.

You can study about therapy at the end  of life here www.deepermindfulness.com

Death: last stage of personal growth or a dead end?

Deeper Mindfulness is working with a new national Initiative to persuade people to start talking about death. It is called The Departure Lounge.    https://www.departure-lounge.org/

The project invites us to consider something that has been out of fashion for centuries- A Good Death. They say:
Explore The Departure Lounge to discover what a good death has meant for others, and to think about what it might mean for you.

 I have all the props they sent me. 

On October 24th and October 31st 9.00 - 11.00 a.m. at the Eden Cafe in Witney, join me and the The Departure Lounge to talk about death and dying.

https://www.edencafe.kiwi/

As the oldest survivor of my family, and someone who has worked with such issues for forty years in health and social services settings I have something to contribute to such discussions. I have even written a training course for therapist who may come across death and dying in their work.

More details on end of life therapy at www.deepermindfulness.com which launches soon.

I held a very informal meeting, just an old friend and I, at The Eden Cafe in Witney this week.

The issue was when is it right to tell the truth to someone.

When a person is in total denial of their impending death and gives signals that they prefer it to stay that way, should we confront them with reality?  

Arnold Mindell once told me, "Not everyone is in the growers club," meaning that only some people are actively involved in their own personal development as human beings.

Maybe only a poet like Hausmann is thinking of death at the age of twenty:

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my three score years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

A.E. Housman

Some people like me had a near death experience when very young, and do not have the same fear of death as most. We know that life has in it the possibility of transcendence. 


I wrote a responded to his poem in mid-life.

HOMAGE TO HAUSMAN

Of my three score years and ten

I’ve twenty seven left, but then

I’ve spent the whole of forty three

So adding up its plain to see

There isn’t so much left to me.

When I was young the days were slow

And time stood still for all I knew

Or cared

I wasn’t scared.

But now the days depart at pace

There hardly seems to be a place

To stop

And think.

For now that I’ve reached forty four

I’ll strive to shut the study door

Push all my daily work outside

So I can tell myself I’ve tried

To contemplate what life remains

To use my brains to take great pains

To question what my life’s about

Before the candle gets snuffed out.

To chose what goals I’m aiming for

So I can have a chance to score.

At eighteen years I said to me

That thirty were enough to be

On this earth for.

The world I thought was too unkind

For children and their tender minds

For parents could not give enough

No one was formed of the right stuff

For doing that.

At thirty two I had a child

A love child.

Fortune on us smiled,

Or so I thought.

The child was what our loving brought.

Between a woman and a man

Deep love the generations span

Life opens up

It fills that cup

Transcends the helpless ego plan

I do not live with them any more

At forty years I closed that door

Another child soon came to me

Another girl on my family tree

A second chance,

Another home,

A place to settle,

No more to roam.

But is that what my life’s about?

Their lives go on while mine dies out

To see them grow like blossoms bright

While I gaze on with failing sight?

I care for them and love them too,

But is that all I have to do

With life?

I often stroll among the graves

The stones that stand,

While others pave

The ground I tread.

Could I be happy to be dead?

What words would have to mark my grave

Provide the rest in peace I crave?

Tomorrow I enter my seventieth year, having lived a year more than my father. 

For Christians, The Bible says in Psalm 90:


The days of our years are threescore years and ten; 

In which case I am entering the departure lounge right now. Modern medicine tells me I am only 50 in biological years, whatever that means. 

Should I be sorting out my affairs, making my will, preparing my family?

My friend's mother has terminal cancer and feels very content at the moment. Her husband is very happy to take care of her needs and never mention the subject.


Is ignorance bliss?


The conventional wisdom among health professionals is that dying people should be told about dying?


Is it so important that people face death and go through the difficult process of adjusting to the fact of death till we accept it and make our peace with our ending?

Culturally, we have been trying to hide away from death, shut it off in a back ward of a hospital and not give it much thought. Recent attempts to open up a dialogue like this one are not going too well so far.

We are schooled on medical science finding an answer to everything.


My friend is scared her mum will suddenly discover her impending death at the last minute and have no time for adjustment. She may die in terror, shockingly exposed to the truth.

I never had a long conversation about death with my mother. She talked about the practicalities, wills and stuff like that, all very matter of fact, very acceptingly. 

On a sudden impulse my partner and I went to visit her one day. We chatted as usual, pleased to see my new partner. As we were about to go she said, "I just wanted to see you settled."

Meetings with remarkable people; Number One, Naomi Allen.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/huge-trove-british-biodata-unlocking-secrets-depression-sexual-orientation-and-more

https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/2019/09/uk-biobank-leads-the-way-in-genetics-research-to-tackle-chronic-diseases-2/


Professor Naomi Allen is chief scientist in the UK Biobank. It is her work that has created the open access which makes this biobank more full of potential than all the others. 

"as new papers appear every few days, researchers say the UKB remains a shining example of the power of curiosity unleashed. "It's the thing we always dreamed of,"  says one researcher.

Ni is one of the loveliest people I have ever met. It is wonderful to see that someone with such a bright sparkle still shining in her eyes can come through the competition in a university like Oxford, which is still utterly dominated by white middle class, middle aged or elderly men, and become a Chief Scientist.

"The last couple of years have been the happiest I have known," she tells me.

Oxford has just been judged the top university in the world again by one organisation, though I am not sure on what criteria they make such judgments. 

The place is still heavily prejudiced against black and ethnic minorities, working class people and women.

"As a woman, you have to be tougher, more assertive, you have to think out your strategies for success very carefully," says Ni.

Professor Allen is still remarkably modest. As she describes her job, opening up scientific research to even the smallest group across the planet, you might think she is a glorified admin officer. "I am not one of the lead researchers," she says. I did not argue. A couple of years ago I congratulated her on making Professor. "I am only assistant professor," she replied.

When you are as talented as she is you don't need to boast. 

The big job has come at a convenient time for Ni. Her children are now into the teenage years and can get themselves to school and are able to be much more self directing. 

With such a very busy life Ni finds it hard to switch off and get some sleep. She has tried one of the many mindfulness apps out there and managed to follow it, at least for a while.

I suggested she might do better with my Deeper Mindfulness. We chatted about Chaos Theory and David Bohm's "Wholeness and the implicate order." I told her about the intense out-of-body experiences that are typical of students whose kundalini is awakened. She finds even imagining light flowing into the body via the mindfulness app problematic. It does not fit into her scientific world view.

Why would she want to change a world view which is enabling her to lead a revolution in science which will enable a totally personalized medical practice based on your genetic make up coming about within the next ten years?

Such strange things only happen to those who are ready for that kind of awakening. I told her how I woke one night with Shostakovic's fifth symphony exploding in my head, knowing I had to start learning the violin. (One of my more mundane experiences.)

I will send her Baba Muktananda's picture. Like Joseph Chiltern Pierce, author of Magical Child,  the Crack in the Cosmic Egg and The Bond of Power, she can dump it in the cyber bin. When the time is right, however, if the time gets to be right for her that is, those eyes will do their work, and her world will change, just as it did with JCP, but hopefully not as disturbingly. The world might be the poorer if she dropped her work and family and went off to an ashram as Chiltern Pierce did. Who can be sure?

Baba Muktananda was once shown the inside of an atomic reactor by scientific devotees. "Yes", he said, "that is the blue light of consciousness. It is always with me."